Electronics for Imaging's (EFI's) Fiery has introduced powerful new cloud capabilities and additional productivity enhancements for print businesses in the new version 6.8 of the EFI Fiery Command WorkStation job management solution.

An EFI IQ cloud integration gives Command WorkStation users the ability to back up and restore their customized user interface settings, local presets and imposition templates. With a click of button, they can invite other Command WorkStation users in their print shops, or at other company locations, to download and install common settings and resources. A shop can optimize Command WorkStation for all users even in multiple locations for a faster and more flexible way to consistently manage jobs with the confidence that their configurations are saved securely in their company's EFI IQ cloud account.

EFI IQ cloud capabilities for better business management and control

With the same EFI IQ account, managers can easily take advantage of cloud applications to extract value from their print shop data to minimize bottlenecks, optimize equipment utilization and track performance by shift. Features available at no charge for use with an unlimited number of cut-sheet digital printers include:

• EFI IQ Dashboard, an application that provides a personalized view of printer status, consumables and job status right now
• EFI Insight, an application that helps managers transform print production trend data into actionable analytics that drive business improvement
• EFI Notify, an application that delivers alerts for production-blocking events and enables automatic production report distribution
• EFI Go, a mobile app that delivers EFI IQ dashboard metrics, notifications and more to busy managers to monitor operations even while they are not on site

"This new version of Command WorkStation is a significant milestone in our strategy to improve Fiery capability with EFI IQ cloud services," said John Henze, vice president of sales and marketing, EFI Fiery. "Using the familiar Command WorkStation interface, users can now access cloud services to better manage both their print jobs and their business."

New enhancements for more efficient, faster job management

Print businesses also gain important flexibility and faster job set up by using the new selective preset capability in Command WorkStation 6.8. Now, users can define settings that only apply to specific aspects of a job, leaving all other original settings untouched. Using server presets can reduce the time it takes to prepare incoming files and get jobs ready for production by 80%.

Additional features in version 6.8 are being well received by customers. 

"It's great to see several of my, and my customers', suggested features in this new Command WorkStation release," said Darin Lerbs, production print solutions architect, Marco. "For me, being able to rearrange Fiery servers in the server list and easily see server IP addresses helps a great deal. And my customers are going to love the ability to see how long it's going to take for a job to complete printing — that's really going to help them plan their workloads."

The latest version of EFI Fiery Command WorkStation is available for download at no charge at www.efi.com/cws.